You developed a mobile app and added all the necessary features you thought your target audience would need. You assumed that your app would be a fantastic solution to many problems in the mobile world.
Everything was great: the UI/UX design, the flow, and more. However, your app got few installs. All your money, time, and efforts go in vain. You don’t get what went wrong.
Do you know what have you missed?
You have not invested much time in building an MVP. Yes, it plays a massive role in determining the success of your app.
No matter which mobile app development company you hire or how well you design it, you need to make an MVP to know whether you are going in the right direction.
Let’s read more about the importance of MVP for a successful business and how it can help you get the desired result.
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What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, is a development technique in which a new product or website is built with enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development.
The concept of MVP has been around since the 1940s but gained more prominence in 2001 when Eric Ries wrote about it in his influential book “The Lean Startup.”
The idea behind MVP is that instead of spending time and money building something comprehensive from the start, businesses can launch a basic version quickly to validate if there is any interest from users. This allows companies to avoid wasting resources developing features that customers may not use.
Table of Contents
What is the Purpose of MVP?
Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) reduces the risk related to introducing new products and services. By launching an MVP, organizations can test out their products or services in the market quickly and cost-effectively to gather feedback from potential customers.
With this feedback, organizations can identify the most valuable features to customers and adjust their strategy accordingly. This helps them avoid wasting resources on unnecessary features or services that users may not well receive.
Furthermore, launching an MVP allows businesses to understand better how their product fits into the competitive environment and what they need to do for it to succeed.
Also Read: Product Launch Roadmap: How to Create a Successful One
Characteristics of MVP in Business
- Has the essence of the product idea: A Minimum Viable Product has to display the core features of your product. The company won’t get reliable user feedback if it is too light.
- Low-cost Production: Ideally, a Minimum Viable Product is reasonable to make with the smallest amount of effort. The business should be able to quickly release the MVP and get helpful feedback without spending considerable time or money developing it. This is primarily crucial for startups that generally need more working funds.
- Valuable: A decent MVP should provide early adopters with a bit of insight into the final product and the value it will offer. When building the MVP, think about the target market and possible pain points it can handle.
- Room for Iteration: Your MVP needs to serve as an excellent beginning point for future growth—letting you begin with the key features and iterate upon them to build a product that a broad user base will discover helpful and valuable.
MVP for Businesses: 7 Key Advantages
The primary benefit of an MVP is that it allows businesses to test their assumptions and validate their ideas without investing too much time or money upfront. But that’s not all. Here are some more advantages of MVP:
- Lowers Costs: One of the most significant benefits of an MVP is that it reduces costs. By creating an MVP, you can focus on only the most essential features, saving you time and money. For example, Dropbox started as an MVP that offered simple cloud storage solutions, which they then built on as they gathered feedback from early customers.
- Reduces Risk: Building an MVP minimizes the risk of failure. Instead of investing a lot of time and money into a full-fledged product, you can test the waters with an MVP and see if there is demand for your product. If not, you can pivot or move on to another idea. For example, Airbnb started as a platform for renting out air mattresses in living rooms. It wasn’t until they received feedback from early adopters that they pivoted to become a platform for renting out entire homes.
- Speeds up Time-to-Market: By focusing on only the most critical features, you can bring your product to market much faster than if you were to develop a full-featured product. This can be critical in highly competitive markets. For example, Instagram started as a photo-sharing app with limited functionality but quickly gained traction and was able to launch new features rapidly to stay ahead of competitors.
- Enables Customer Feedback: An MVP allows you to gather feedback from early customers, which is critical for understanding what works and what doesn’t. This feedback can then be used to improve your product and create something that better meets the needs of your target market. For example, Uber started as a simple app that allowed users to request a ride. However, they quickly received feedback that users wanted more information about their drivers, which led to the introduction of driver ratings and reviews.
- Tests Assumptions: An MVP allows you to test assumptions about your product and your market. This is critical because beliefs can be wrong, and if you invest too much time and money into a product based on incorrect assumptions, you may end up with a product that nobody wants. For example, Foursquare started as an MVP designed to help people find the best places to eat and drink, but they quickly discovered that users were more interested in checking into locations to share with friends.
- Improves Product-Market Fit: It helps you improve product-market fit by testing your product with early adopters. By doing so, you can better understand what features are essential to your target market and what problems your product solves. This knowledge can then refine your product and create a better fit with your market. For example, Buffer started as an MVP, providing a simple way to schedule social media posts. Still, they quickly discovered that their early adopters were more interested in tools to help them manage social media accounts.
- Attracts Investors: Investors are always looking for businesses that have a solid product-market fit and can demonstrate traction with early adopters. By building an MVP, you can demonstrate that your product has market potential, which can attract investors who are willing to fund further development.
How to Create MVP for Business? Here are 9 Steps
1. Market Research
One of the essential steps for building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is to conduct thorough market research. You should know who your target users are and which problems you’re trying to solve with your product. Knowing this will help you determine the features that should be included in the MVP.
A survey by CB Insights unveiled that the number one reason behind the startup’s failure was a ‘shortage of market demand.’ If the product doesn’t nail the issue, users won’t buy it.
2. Define Your Idea & Recognize the Vital Point
You have an idea regarding your new mobile app, but before developing an MVP, find out the issue you wish to resolve and see who you are seeking.
Creating an MVP with several features without a primary cause usually leads to failure and capital loss. Hence, the right way to begin is by discovering answers to these questions:
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Why do I require you to build this product?
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How can the product aid customers?
By responding to these questions, you understand your product’s goal, and via this, it is possible to find the most suitable solution for your customer’s demands.
3. MVP Technique Selection
Here, you must choose the best MVP strategy based on the product’s goals, budget, and available resources.
- No-product: This is a no-coding approach that involves creating a landing page, usually with a short video explaining the product and an email capture form. This strategy is ideal for products that have yet to be built, or require minimal development skills.
- Product-mockup or Product-based MVP: This involves creating a product mockup or Minimum Viable Product that can be used to demonstrate the value of the idea. This could include a prototype, demo video, early version of the app or website, etc. It should look and feel like a real product in order to capture the user’s attention.
- Single-feature MVP: This strategy involves focusing on a single key feature of a product to create a minimal viable product. The goal is to get feedback from early adopters and iterate quickly based on their input. This approach works well for products that have multiple features but don’t necessarily need all of them to launch successfully.
- MLP: Minimum Lovable Product is a strategy focused on developing the smallest, most essential features of a product and releasing it to users as quickly as possible.
4. Discover the Ideal Users
So, as you are ready to develop your product, it is crucial to map out the user path or journey. Think about the best place to test or get feedback on your mobile app before you move ahead with the final deployment.
This can assist you in making sure if there is a demand for the product or app in that specific region and if your target customers can use it in the future.
5. Develop the Pain-and-Gain Map
The Pain-and-Gain map is a great way to determine what your target users want from the product you are developing. This will help understand the pain points of users and how they can be addressed with a suitable solution. It also helps identify potential gains by solving those problems.
6. Classify the App Features
When you are done with the user analysis, it is time to decide what features and functionality would be best for your product. Make sure that every feature or service that you plan on offering must have a purpose and should add value to the overall experience.
7. Build your MVP
After illustrating the scope of MVP, start the iterative development process. Always remember that the MVP demands testing throughout the development cycle. Before deployment, ensure the ultimate product functions appropriately.
8. Test, Learn, and Repeat
You should do testing at every stage of the MVP development process. Make sure to test your product in different scenarios and get feedback from potential customers. After testing, analyze what needs improvement and return to the drawing board for further iterations. Make sure to make your product simple, and remember to ask your customers what extra features they want.
9. Measure Success
Analyze your MVP’s success and determine if you achieved the objectives for developing it. This is particularly important if you are looking to scale up your product or service in the future. Once you have calculated the success of an MVP, make sure to use that information as a learning curve for further development efforts.
Deploy if everything looks good after testing, start talking with potential customers, and deploy your first version of MVP into the real world. You should also keep track of user feedback so that when needed, you can adjust features accordingly and improve customer experience later.
Mistakes to Avoid While Building an MVP
The errors or mistakes made during the development of an MVP can have long-lasting and costly consequences. Hence, it is crucial to understand the most common pitfalls when creating and launching a minimum viable product. Below are five mistakes that you should avoid at all costs:
- Not Understanding Customer Needs: It is essential to thoroughly understand the customer’s needs before beginning any design or coding process. If you don’t have an accurate understanding of what your customers need, you won’t be able to create a product that meets those requirements.
- Skipping User Testing:
User testing is one of the best ways to identify potential issues with your MVP before launch so they can be addressed in advance, ensuring that users get an optimal experience from your product immediately.
- Relying on Assumptions Instead of Data: Too often, developers rely heavily on their opinions and beliefs rather than researching what users actually want. This kind of guesswork can lead to products that fail in the market because they need to be tailored to customer needs.
- Not Setting Clear Objectives: Setting clear objectives for your development team will help ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards a common goal. Without established goals, it’s easy for teams to wander off course, and their work can become unfocused or inefficient.
- Failing to Monitor User Feedback: Many developers overlook this vital step. However, monitoring user feedback is essential to ensure your MVP meets customer expectations and requirements after launch. By tracking how people are using your product, you can quickly identify areas where it may need improvement or adjustments before releasing a full version.
Tips to Target the Right Market to Build an MVP
Here are some tips for targeting the right market to develop an MVP for your business and maximize the return on investment:
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Study the Competition
It is necessary to dive deep into what your competitors are doing and the strategies that they are using. Building an MVP is nearly impossible if that isn’t already present in the market. Even if a small business or startup has exceptional ideas, competing with established players will still be difficult.
Hence, they must find out how to place the MVP within an industry where it can succeed.
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Divide the Customer Base Geographically
As soon as the startup has discovered a suitable customer base for the MVP, the next tip is to concentrate on geographical segmentation. This is a valuable technique to get acquainted with the location-based characteristics that include a particular target market. Exploring the location of the target customer base’s location can change the game while developing an MVP.
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Search for the Motivation Behind a Purchase
What if the MVP is ready, but no one wants to buy it? Make sure you understand the motivation behind a purchase. Identify the emotional triggers that compel customers and target those areas with your product or service. Connect with them through email marketing, social media campaigns, etc.
Calculating Success After Developing an MVP
There are numerous strategies to indicate the success of the product. Here are the most typical, compelling, and proven methods to gauge the success of an MVP:
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Word of Mouth
This is the most helpful method of evaluating a product’s success. The more people talk about the product, the higher its chances of success in the market.
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Engagement
Engagement allows a startup to calculate not just the present value of the product but even the future value. It assists in improving the user experience based on feedback.
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Sign-Up
Sign-ups are a viable method to estimate user interest. They may even convert to income based on calculating interest in the product.
Final Thoughts
Building an MVP is no longer optional but essential for success in today’s highly competitive business landscape. It enables businesses to test their ideas, validate assumptions, and gather feedback without investing too much time or money upfront.
With MVP development services, businesses can maximize the potential of their MVP and increase their chances of success. So, consider building an MVP today if you’re looking to unlock your business potential.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What does MVP mean?
MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. It is a product with the minimum features required to satisfy early customers and gather feedback for future development. The goal of an MVP is to test assumptions, reduce risk, and speed up time-to-market for new products or services.
2. What are the three elements of MVP?
The three key elements of an MVP are:
- A clear definition of the problem it solves.
- A minimal set of features is required to solve that problem.
- A target audience is willing to use the product.
3. How do I create MVP for business?
To create an MVP for your business, you need to identify your target audience, define the core problem your product solves, and determine the minimum set of features required to solve that problem. Then, you can create a simple prototype and test it with early adopters to gather feedback and validate your assumptions.
